London 2012 Olympics: How the Lottery transformed Team GB

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A lucky Britishpunter is celebrating scooping around £150 million on the EuroMillions drawthis weekend, but the winner is not the only one toasting a lottery windfall.

The triumphant
members of Team GB should well raise a glass to all those who have bought a
ticket in the last 15 years - for their contribution to Olympic success appears
unquestionable.

Increasing
financial support for elite athletes has clearly paid dividends.

In Atlanta in 1996,
the year before the serious lottery money started flowing, Team GB won a
solitary gold.

The correlation
between investment and medal plundering has tracked upward ever since,
culminating with the 60-plus haul in London following joint lottery and
Treasury backing of around £260 million.

A basic ready
reckoner would put the cost of a Team GB medal at around £4 million.

But the successes,
and similar feats by other heavy spending countries, prompt an uncomfortable
question for the Olympic movement - is money now the primary route to Olympic
glory?

"You do not
get excellence on the cheap nor do you get all the virtuous outcomes that come
from that without long term and predictable levels of funding," Games
supremo Lord Coe said in welcoming a Government commitment that £125 million
annual spend on British Olympic and Paralympic athletes will continue to Rio.

"That's what
we witnessed in Beijing, that's what we witnessed here and if we want to
maintain our position in Olympic sport then that's what you will need to
do."

"Fifteen years
ago the lottery funding came in and it was the whole catalyst for the team's
success, the starting-point," he said.

Double gold cyclist
Laura Trott, 20, does not remember the days when money was tight for British
cycling.

"Funding is
very important - it is the key to our sport, really. We would be lost without
it," she said.

China has invested
a colossal amount in its bid to become an Olympic superpower.

Prior to Beijing,
it diverted a staggering 4.5 billion dollars (£2.87 billion) into its sporting
programmes.

The investment by
its main competitor for top spot, the US, may have been modest by comparison,
but it still dwarfed the government support afforded to most other nations.

The US Olympic
Committee ploughed around 230 million dollars into the sporting teams that
would represent it in Beijing, with additional support from sponsors and the
individual governing bodies.

The result was 110
medals and second place in the overall standings behind host China (which won
fewer medals but more golds).

Overall that works
out at approximately 2 million dollars a medal - though there are dramatic
differences between sports.

The US track and
field team won 24 medals in 2008 with an overall spend of almost 16 million
dollars while the football programme won a ladies gold at a cost of 44 million
dollars.

Gymnast Gabrielle
Douglas, a star of 2012, is a prime example of what funding can produce.

The 16-year-old
from Virginia became the first African American to win Olympic gold in
gymnastics - doing it not once, but twice.

But if it had not
been for government support, the US's new sweetheart, who was raised by a
single mother, acknowledged it may have been a very different story.

"I think
funding is definitely very important," she said.

"You know I
wasn't the richest girl on the block, you know my friends would be like 'look I
got new Ugg boots, my mom and dad bought me this car' so you know my family and
I have you know struggled kind of over the past years and it was kind of hard
at times.

"But I am just
so thankful for the funding because it definitely helps my family out of
situations."

Prior to the
Vancouver Winter Games in 2010, Canada had hosted two previous Olympics and had
not registered a gold in either.

Adamant this would
not happen again, the Canadian Olympic Committee focused on precisely what it
would take to produce medals.

The "Own the
Podium" strategy was formulated with the buy-in of all the nation's
sporting bodies that would be competing.

A key element of
delivering the success that the hosts craved was funding.

It was increased to
unprecedented levels, with 110 million dollars ploughed into athlete support
teams in the five years prior to Vancouver.

Canada not only
broke its home gold duck, but it won 14 of them to top the medal table.

In contrast, the
economic woes of Greece saw state investment in elite sports slashed by around
25% last year.

The country won
four medals in Beijing but just two in London.

It took 105
athletes to London, its lowest Olympic representation in 20 years.

In the run-up to
the summer a number of high profile Greek athletes publicly complained about
their training facilities and blamed the government cutbacks.

But is cold cash
the only factor in generating national glory?

Economists at the
Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany have analysed all the contributing factors
to come up with a formula for predicting success.

Population size,
climate, Gross Domestic Product and even prevalence of tropical diseases all
play a part in producing Olympic champions, they found.

Politics is also a
factor, according to the experts, with socialist systems - and countries with a
socialist past - seemingly more intent on delivering gold to project their
national image.

While the academics
insist their calculations are validated by the medal tables they concede there
will always be striking exceptions.

The success of the
African middle distances runners are obvious ones - highlighted in 2012 by
Kenyan 800 metre runner David Rudisha's blistering world record win.

And then, of
course, there is Usain Bolt and his friends in the Jamaican sprint team.

The exploits of
nations without the riches of the Olympic superpowers emphasise that while
millions may help to produce medals, raw talent is what ultimately makes a
champion.